SACH
AGM 2001
Held at Stirling Royal Infirmary
President's Report
by Anne Harper
Relating to Scottish Executive Health Department
This last year has been a time of very interesting activity in relation to the Scottish Executive with ongoing discussion about Spirituality in the NHS and Multicultural Issues. This has also been impacting on individual Trusts which will have been establishing their own "ethnic" committees in some form or another, as have health boards. Chaplains may have been involved in some of this or may be aware of it. Trusts also received copies of the Guidelines for the Appointment of Chaplainswhich were drawn up by a Scottish Executive working group led by Stewart McGregor. Trusts were asked to respond to the draft of the document and chaplains may have been consulted by management about the formulation of a reply. There is a conference in November for Trust managers about the issue of spirituality in the NHS and chaplains have also been invited to apply for places at this. There is, therefore, a lot of talk about this issue. The crucial test of the Executive's real commitment to it will come when discussion moves on to finance. It is good to raise the profile of spiritual care, it is good to raise expectations but if the resources are not put in place to turn the ideas and policies into action on the ground it will be at best disappointing and will only increase the pressures on existing chaplaincy resources. After the meeting in November we will hopefully have a clearer idea of the thinking of the Executive. SACH has maintained contact with the Scottish Executive through its representatives on a range of committees and work groups - these are listed again in the current News Sheet - and by letter with officials and MSPs.
Registration
The question of Registration was raised at our AGM last year. The College of Health Care Chaplains has also being pursuing this issue on a UK wide basis. Some of you attended a meeting earlier in the year organised by CHCC at which MSF officials spoke about the need for chaplaincy to have professional recognition, particularly when it comes to negotiations about pay and conditions. The CHCC plan was to establish a register of their own members first and then perhaps a year later to accept applications from members of other professional bodies. During informal discussions immediately following that meeting there was some indication that the registration process could be open to SACH members at the same time as College members but current thinking seems to be that this would not happen until 2003. In the meantime all members of SACH who are in paid employment as chaplains were asked if they would wish to be included on a SACH register of chaplains. Around forty names are now on this. The College has issued further information to its member and a leaflet about registration and we are in communication with the president of CHCC concerning this. The Scottish Executive has no awareness of this move and at the moment has no expectations that Scottish chaplains should be registered but if it happens elsewhere in the UK this attitude will change. SACH in any case has agreed that we should move towards registration.
Training Fund
In order for registration to be meaningful it has to involve a commitment to ongoing training and education which would have to be accredited in some way. We acknowledged this at the last AGM and agreed that we would be committed to this. The executive envisages training files which would be kept by all registered chaplains recording training courses, seminars, research work which they have undertaken and which has been accredited along with a pro forma summary of what the course involved and what benefit they gained from it. Over a period of three years chaplains would have been expected to have gained a certain number of training/education 'points' or 'credits' in order to re-register. The whole mechanism for this still needs to be researched further and then properly explained. The executive has met with the full-time training officer who is willing to co-operate with us on this. We also felt that it was important that chaplains who participate in training events, courses which are not specifically "chaplaincy" events should be able to receive credit for them and we will be looking at ways of enabling this. Funding is another issue. It is to be hoped that with increased emphasis on the importance of spiritual care there might be a greater willingness on the part of Trusts to provide funding for training but at the moment the available funding for all healthcare workers is extremely low and we are aware that it can be very difficult for chaplains to get any commitment from management when it comes to trying to book for a conference or course. The executive has therefore established a small training fund which we will try to maintain at £2,000 per year. This will provide small grants to SACH members for training purposes, but Keith will say more about that later.
[more information]
In the longer term we will still aim to participate in any UK wide registration and will keep open channels of communication with CHCC and any other interested bodies.
Journal
The Journal continues to maintain its high standard of excellence and I would want to thank James Falconer for the immense amount of work which he does to produce the journal on our behalf and also of course to David Mitchell and Georgina Nelson along with the whole Editorial Board for maintaining the quality of content which we so much appreciate.
News Sheet
There is a Newsletter in your folder - thanks to Fred Coutts and his secretarial assistance in Aberdeen. I know that there was additional work involved this time because it is a particularly large edition. So thank you for this edition and for the ongoing work. If we don't receive articles or information from SACH members there can be no Newsletter. We, therefore, thank those of you who have contributed and would ask more people to do so.
[News Sheet 7 October 2001]
Representing You
As an Association we are grateful to those who represent us on various committees and I would want to acknowledge that and I would also want to express my own thanks to the executive for their work and support throughout the year.
[More information]
Secretary
A final thank you to our departing secretary. Ian has done the job for four years now having originally agreed to do it for a few months. Since the new secretary isn't here, I can say that there is a lot of work involved which Ian has done efficiently, good naturedly and with utter dependability. All of it is behind the scenes work which can be taken so much for granted, but without it being done efficiently little else would work. On behalf of SACH - very sincere thanks to Ian.